


What need have you to dread the monstrous crying of wind?

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-07
Updated: 2010-05-07
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: [Fic Exchange '09] A fire, a conversation, and a plastic chair at St. Mungo's on Christmas // Coming to terms with peace





	What need have you to dread the monstrous crying of wind?

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Prompt: 

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved." 

\- Augusta E. Rundel

To whom it may concern: I hope you enjoy this, as your belated Fic Exchange gift, even if it may not have been what you expected.

_______________________________________________________________________________               

“Run!” a woman screeches into the night, watches as people flash past her in a rush to get out of the burning building.  A beam snaps and falls, the sound of a breaking house, breaking bones of wood and glass echo, beat hard against her eardrums and she yelps, just to hear the sound of her own voice, to know that it still exists in this hellish reality. Fire flares behind her and she makes a mad leap out of the house.  The doorway crumbles behind her.

“Lily!” a voice, hoarse and cracked, cries several meters ahead amongst the chaos of the small band of people around her.  

“Here!” she yells, running and out of breath, whipping around, feeling blind.  “I’m here!”

The voice, _he_ , hurries towards her and grasps her shoulders (hard, shaking), looks at her intently.  “Are you…”

“My wrist, nothing worse.  But.  Someone was trapped. Emmeline.  Where’s Emmeline?” Lily asks desperately, looks at the group of faces around her, illuminated in the dark by the burning building.

“They’re taking her to Mungo’s.  Her leg is badly burned,” says a man, cringing as his leg is bound.

“Who took her, Fenwick?”

“Gideon and Doge,” he says.  “I saw ‘em go.”

Lily grabs the hand of the young (so young) man next to her and looks up at him fiercely, daring him to challenge her.  “I’m going too.”

“No,” he says, stopping dead as she tugs on his arm.

“Come with me then,” she says, letting his arm drop limply to his side as she runs off.

“No, Lily.  It’s dangerous,” he yells, running after her, trying to reach out and stop her.

She yells something into the wind, the only word of which he can make out is “Invincible.”

“Wait!”

“If you’re not coming then get out of my way, Potter,” she sneers back at him.  She reaches the street corner, stops to give James a sharp look, and apparates with a small _pop_.  

He runs up to the same place she was standing only a moment before, out of breath and tugging at his hair as his glasses fall down his nose.  He rages at the night.  He disappears.

…

She whispers to him sometimes.  When she is away, she whispers and he always hears her voice, hears her tell of days began and ended.  He hears it in the soft touch of the snow upon the ground, in the wind that sweeps the snow up in spirals and into blankets for houses and cities and people, as he hesitates in front of an empty department store whose sign reads “Purge and Dowse, Ltd.”  He stares at the window of the store, at a broken dummy who does not have the manners to resist staring back.   

“ _James Potter.”_

_His head snapped up immediately from the comic he was reading to see a girl standing above him.  “Lily Evans,” he said with a nervous smile._

_ _She stood still, grinning at him.  He waited for a few long seconds before asking,“Can I help you?”_ _

_ _ _“Would you follow me?”_ _ _

_“Er – pardon?”_

_ _“When I leave, would you follow?”_ _

_“Where?”_

_She shrugged.  “Anywhere.”_

_“When?”_

_“Now.  Five years from now.”_

_“What are you – ”_

_“Come with me,” she interrupted, taking the comic book from his hands and placing it on the table next to him.  She took his hand in hers and held it tightly,her palm damp and small in his._

_ _“Where?”_ _

_She shrugged and smiled lightly.  “Anywhere.”_

_He grinned “What took you so long?”_

_“Life,” she responded proudly, leading him out of the common room and into the daylight._

Or perhaps he has only dreamed it.

He paces in front of the department store window before finally stopping and turning to the mannequin again.  “I’m here to see Emmeline Vance.”

The dummy nods and he walks through the glass into a surprisingly half vacant reception area.  He trudges over to the desk marked “Inquiries” where a young witch smacking her gum and reading a Witch Weekly magazine sits.

“Er – excuse me?”

She glances at him, bored, smacks her gum extra loud.  He winces.  She continues reading.  “Can I ‘elp you?”

“I’m here to see Emmeline Vance.”

The witch sighs and pulls a clipboard out from under the counter, runs a finger down a list in front of her and looks back up at him.  “Ms. Vance is currently in with the healers.”

“Yes, but which floor?”

“Ground floor, Gaspard Shingleton Burn ward.  It’s the first door to your left if you go down that hallway there,” she says, pointing to a set of double doors to his right. 

“Thank you.  Not a busy night then?”

“Will be tomorrow, I s’pose.  Always is with Christmas.  People go mad.”

“Right,” he says.  His shoes clack against the tile of the reception room, trainers smacking down with each step, as a mother and father frantically carry their daughter, sporting a third eye, into the hospital and towards the “Inquiries” desk. 

He walks quickly into the Gaspard Shingleton ward, through the doors that swish back and forth, back and forth, and finds Gideon Prewett and Lily Evans sitting in the corner, their heads together as they whisper furiously.  She looks up at the sound of his footsteps, her hard expression barely changing when she recognizes him.

“Hullo Potter,” Gideon says, clapping James on the back and conjuring him a chair.  “Rough night, eh?”

“Yeah,” he says, not taking his eyes off of Lily.  Her eyes soften a little under his gaze and her mouth loses its tension.  “I thought I might come to relieve one of you.  Lily?”

“I’m fine,” she says icily. 

“You should get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“I thought you must have been sleep deprived, considering how thick you’re acting.”  His voice is deceptively quiet.

Her jaw clenches, but she looks down at her feet and does not answer.

Gideon sits back in his chair looking mildly uncomfortable.  “I’d be happy to get back.  See how the others are doing.  Doge left when Lily came,” he says quickly, standing up in the process. 

“That’d be great,” James says, still staring at this young (so young) woman.  She stares back at him like a sullen child. 

“See you two then?  Happy Christmas, I suppose,” Gideon says before walking away.

“Happy Christmas,” Lily calls, breaking eye contact with James to smile at Gideon as he leaves.

As soon as the door swings shut behind him, James reaches out to grab Lily’s hand.  She lets him, but her hand is limp and small, so small, in his.  

“This isn’t your job,” she tells him.

“What isn’t?”

“To protect me.  I’m _not_ stupid, James, no matter what you might think.  I know the consequences probably before you’ve even decided there might be consequences.”

“You’re not stupid.  Just rash.”

“As if you’re not rash?  You and your hero complex?”

“ _No_.  I just…” 

Lily looks at her feet against the ugly sterile tile of the hospital.  When she looks back up her face is drawn and wan.  “I’m… _so_ tired.”  She pauses, looking down at the floor again.  “James.”

“Yes?”

 “Why have so many people died?  Everything we touch – that we all touch – seems to break and crumble at our fingertips before we even have the chance to say goodbye.”

“There’s good in the end.”

“Is there?”

“Hopefully.”

“I believe there is.  But I just can’t see it.”

“I can see it.  In you sometimes, you know?”

“Really?” she asks, looking at him skeptically.

“Yeah,” he murmurs awkwardly.  He isn’t much for sweet nothings. 

“Do you understand purpose?  My identity is all muddled up in the gray area of life and the battles.  I feel as if I should pray.  It’s the strangest feeling in the world.  As if I’m grasping at straws but all the straws are gone so all I can do is learn how to fall.”

“Pray to whom?”

“A god I’ve forgotten, I suppose.”  She chuckles wryly.  “There’s this intense longing for a past that I’ve convinced myself I had at one point – all golden.  There’s nostalgia where nostalgia isn’t due.” 

“I think it’s called Christmas,” he said, half jokingly, but she nods earnestly and smiles a little.

“That’s the truest thing I’ve heard in a long while, James Potter.  Christmas…and the war.”  She draws closer to him, visibly swallowing as she grazes her hand over the nape of his neck.  He shivers. 

“You’re giving me goose pimples, Evans,” he whispers.

“Yeah?” She smiles lightly.  She leans over to kiss the corner of his mouth and he hums his appreciation. 

 “I love you, you know.  Even when you’re an idiot,” he murmurs.  She leans away, her eyes heavy lidded as she looks him in the eye.  

“Yeah,” she whispers softly.  She rests her head on his shoulder and laces her hand with his.    

When they wake up the next morning in their plastic chairs and a sleeping Emmeline in a bed down the ward, it is Christmas.

…

It is still dark in the ward, only the smallest bits of dawn cracking through at the horizon.  James is still slumped in his chair, an arm thrown off the side and his mouth open. 

“Happy Christmas,” she whispers, bleary eyed ( _too many dreams_ ).  He stirs, stretching his legs out.  She stares at him for a moment as he groggily opens his eyes.  She leans up against a nearby wall after standing up and stretching and watches him awaken.  He smiles at her tiredly.

“Hullo.”

“Hi.”

“Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas,” she replies, smiling back at him.  She looks up past his head down the ward and sees Emmeline in a nearby bed, sleeping.  “Emmeline’s back.  She’s sleeping.”

“She is?” he asks, yawning and turning around to see her.  “That – that’s great.  Really good.”

They are silent for several long moments, Lily tapping her feet softly against the tile and James yawning again and running his hands through his hair and then trying to flatten it.  

She is silent as she leans against the wall.  She runs her hand along her neck and sighs, knowing that every second of silence increases a wall being built, a tension, an anticipation, a jump, a fall.  With that thought she finally speaks.

“I love you very much.”  She lets the words hang for a moment, ethereal in the air.  “I know I don’t really say it.  I can’t really say it.  It’s too…strange, the words in my mouth.  I’m rather like a bloke that way, aren’t I?”  She laughs a little.  “So I love you, so very, very much.”

He stands up from his chair slowly, his bones cracking as he takes a step towards her.  He reaches out a hand before withdrawing it almost instantly, a gesture forgotten.  He smiles at her and moves to lean against the wall next to her.  Here, he grasps her hand and she turns her head towards him, grinning.  

He holds it tightly, her palm damp and small, so small, in his and asks a question with a thousand meanings and a thousand answers, “Are you ready?”

She smiles (always smiling) and says, “Always.” 


End file.
